With Baby's Death Comes Another Blow

Man Discovers He Isn't Child's Father After Girl Was Killed

June 26, 1996|By SCOTT GLOVER Staff Writer

A note, scribbled on a single sheet of looseleaf paper and passed through a half-open door, was the most Hans and Leah Witzky could muster.

The short letter was written two days after Leah Witzky's 18-month-old daughter was found strangled and stuffed in a freezer. Undoubtedly, it also referred to the pain Hans Witzky felt that day - first, when he learned of little Alexandria's gruesome murder, then when he was told by his wife that a another man had fathered the child.

"No statements or words of sorrow could possibly express what we as a family are faced with now," read the note, which was passed quickly to a reporter through the front door of the Witzkys' Pompano Beach home on Tuesday. "We request that all who feel this tragedy with us give us time to grieve."

Alexandria's paternal grandmother, Christine M. Sharrow, was arrested on Monday and charged with murder for strangling the toddler with the belt from her bathrobe in her Oakland Park apartment.

Alexandria was born Nov. 23, 1994, two years after the Witzkys were married. Leah Witzky, 28, never told her husband that Collada was the baby's father, said Detective Patrick Murray of the Oakland Park Police Department.

She would often fool her husband into thinking that a friend of her's was baby-sitting their little girl, Murray said. The friend, on Leah Witzky's instructions, would then take the baby to Sharrow, 41. Sharrow is on probation after being convicted of killing her boyfriend in 1991.

Only when Hans Witzky, 34, learned that Sharrow was watching the girl when she was murdered did Leah Witzky tell her husband that he was not Alexandria's father, Murray said.

"He never knew what was going on," the detective said. "The timing couldn't have been worse."

Collada could not be reached for comment. It was unclear how he and Leah Witzky met. Murray said Leah Witzky knew about Sharrow's murder conviction and that Sharrow had previously had boughts with alcohol and depression.

"She was careful at first," Murray said. "Then she started to trust her."

According to a police report released on Tuesday, a tearful Sharrow admitted to strangling the baby, telling detectives "no one cared" about the child so she was better off dead.

She then told detective she was "guilty, did want not a lawyer and wanted to be placed on Death Row," the report said.

Sharrow made a similar statement in 1991, after she was arrested by Polk County sheriff's deputies for fatally stabbing her boyfriend in their Lakeland mobile home after a night of drinking and fighting.

"I don't even want to live," she told detectives on the night of the stabbing. "I just took a man's life."

In that case, Sharrow was charged with first-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. She was sentenced to seven years in state prison and was released in 1994 after serving three years of her sentence, state records show.

She has been living South Florida since.

Oakland Park police were called to Sharrow's apartment at 391 NE 42nd Court about 3 p.m. Sunday, after her sister, Carol Webb, called 911 and told the operator she feared for the baby's safety.

Webb told police that Sharrow had just called her and told her: "I have a problem, I killed Alex, Alex is in the freezer," then hung up the phone, according to the report.

When officers arrived, Sharrow was not home. Alexandria's body - with scratch marks around her tiny neck - was found crammed in the freezer compartment of the woman's refrigerator.

An autopsy, put off until Tuesday becuse the toddler was frozen solid, revealed that Alexandria died of strangulation.

Sharrow, who was found sleeping near a bus stop on Oakland Park Boulevard in Sunrise on Monday afternoon, is charged with aggravated child abuse and murder. She is being held without bail in Broward County Jail.

Neither Sharrow's family, nor the Witzkys wished to speak with reporters on Tuesday.

The Witzkys' note, however, asked for prayers for their little girl.

"Alex was to all who knew her a delight of happiness and joy," the note read. "Please keep baby Alex in your prayers."